Atlantis and the Ten Plagues of Egypt: The Secret History Hidden in the Valley of the Kings (23 page)

We will return to the question of the Exodus later. For the moment we must reach a conclusion regarding the Israelite presence in Egypt. From the assorted evidence we have examined,
it would seem that the Biblical account of the Israelite period in Egypt is probably correct – certainly in outline. In other words, the direct ancestors of the Israelites who historically appeared in Canaan in the thirteenth century
BC
had for many years been used as slaves in Egypt. In conclusion, it would seem that they were a tribal group known as the
Apiru,
or Hebrews, who were an influential people among the Hyksos who settled in Egypt around 1700
BC
. They could certainly have reached high office during the Hyksos era, have been appointed chief ministers, and may even have been pharaohs themselves namely the sixteenth dynasty. They were ousted from power along with the Hyksos around 1570
BC
, and had been enslaved by the reign of Tuthmosis III around 1500
BC
. Thereafter, they had been used as hard labour, principally in northern Egypt, by a successor of pharaohs until the early thirteenth century
BC
. (Nearly all the above references to the
Apiru
are from northern Egypt.)

Just prior to Akhenaten's reign (
circa
1360
BC
), therefore, the Israelites certainly seem to have been present in Egypt to have influenced the young king. Moreover, they seem to have been in northern Egypt, around the area of Heliopolis – precisely the location from where Akhenaten seems to have been influenced (see Chapter Seven). The big question, however, is why? Why should the most powerful man in Egypt, and seemingly thousands of others like him, abandon their centuries-old beliefs in favour of a foreign religious concept? How could they have been influenced by the religion of enemy slaves?

CHAPTER NINE

Cataclysm

Around 1350
BC
Egypt is at the height of her power and Amonhotep III is on the throne. His great-grandfather Tuthmosis III has laid the foundations of the largest empire the world has yet seen and the land of Egypt is now filled with abundance. Amonhotep has erected great buildings and monuments in cities throughout the kingdom, all of them notable for their affluence and exceptional quality of design. In Thebes, he has built his enormous Malkata palace, as splendid as any before, and he has glorified Amun-Re in gratitude for his country's fortunes. He has embellished the already massive temple at Karnak, and at Luxor he even builds a new temple to the mighty god. As much as any pharaoh, Amonhotep is worshipped by his people. Images of him stand proud in temples at Memphis, Hierakonpolis and Thebes, and in the temple of Sulb Amonhotep is even depicted adoring his own image.

Here is an Egypt stronger and more prosperous then ever before: a land with Amun-Re firmly entrenched as supreme deity, and with a pharaoh who is immensely rich, powerful and confident. Then, all of a sudden, when he still has years of life left in him, the mighty Amonhotep relinquishes his power, retreats from public life and Akhenaten is appointed as senior co-regent. Moreover, the impeccable state religion is totally
abandoned and an altogether new type of god is installed as principle deity. What on earth has happened?

One would expect such fundamental changes, particularly religious ones, to follow some terrible calamity or period of upheaval. The phenomenal spread of Christianity in the second half of the first century, for example, followed the destruction of the Jerusalem temple and the virtual annihilation of Judea, and the rise of Islam throughout the Middle East in the seventh century followed the collapse of the Roman Empire. Yet even these events did not happen overnight. The peculiar events surrounding the inception of Atenism appear to suggest some very unusual – perhaps unprecedented – set of events. It is not only that Akhenaten himself had been possessed by such radical notions, but that Egypt's population at large seems to have accepted them.

We can gather from the fact that Horemheb did not later expunge Amonhotep's name from the list of kings, and even claimed him as his predecessor, that Amonhotep had never personally sanctioned Atenism. We have also seen how Amonhotep seems to have lived on for some considerable time as co-regent. If Akhenaten had not enjoyed wide support, any dissenters could easily have rallied around Amonhotep resulting in civil strife; yet all the evidence points to the contrary. The country is actually stable enough for Akhenaten to remove himself and his court to a remote location, seemingly without any fear of revolt. All this suggests that virtually everyone was prepared to go along with Akhenaten's peculiar ideas – including the old king himself, who actually moved aside to make way for his son. Egypt shows all the signs of a country shocked into silence. Surely there must be some evidence that something quite extraordinary had recently occurred.

For someone so completely devoted to Amun-Re, Amonhotep
does something very strange towards the end of his independent reign: he erects literally hundreds of statues to another deity – the goddess Sekhmet. At Asher, half a kilometre to the south of the Temple of Amun, Amonhotep was in the process of rebuilding a temple to the chief goddess Mut, when he suddenly reconsecrated it as a temple to Sekhmet. Furthermore, he decreed that Sekhmet should be assimilated with Mut, effectively making her the principal goddess. So many statues did he erect of Sekhmet, here and elsewhere, that nearly every Egyptological collection in the world can boast at least one example. The British Museum has the largest number: over thirty specimens in various states of preservation. Hundreds still remain
in situ
in Egypt, the majority being at the temple of Luxor. It has been estimated that there were around 700 at the temple of Mut alone. In fact, no other deity of ancient Egypt is represented by so many large-scale statues – and nearly all of them were erected by order of Amonhotep III. These statues of Sekhmet are a clear indication that, despite the apparent stability and wealth of the country, something was wrong. Sekhmet was the goddess of devastation!

Sekhmet was represented as a lioness or a woman with a lion's head. She was the daughter of Re who, in Egyptian mythology, had once almost annihilated mankind. They were only saved through Re's personal intervention. Called the 'mighty one', Sekhmet was a fierce goddess of war and strife who brought destruction to the enemy. In tomb scenes, she is depicted spitting flames and a fiery glow emanates from her body; the hot desert winds were even regarded as her breath. She was seen as the
udjat
– 'The Eye of Re' – representing the scorching, destructive power of the sun.

Why these monumental statues of the goddess exist in such unrivalled numbers has never been satisfactorily explained. The
fact that Amonhotep erected more statues to her, by far, than he did to Amun-Re suggests that something had occurred to make him question the power of the chief god. Akhenaten acted in the same way by establishing the Aten as supreme, and ultimately the only, deity. On one of the Sekhmet statues in the British Museum Amonhotep even describes himself with the epithet 'Beloved of Sekhmet', as Akhenaten would later describe himself as 'Beloved of the Aten'. Surely something had afflicted the country: Amonhotep considering it to have been caused by Sekhmet, Akhenaten seeing it as the influence of an altogether new type of god, the Aten.

Sekhmet and the Aten have something which may be very indicative in common: they were both solar deities. Had there occurred some pernicious episode in some way associated with the sun? As both kings had chosen fairly obscure – and particularly unusual – deities to appease, it would seem to suggest a somewhat unique set of circumstances: drought, an intense heat wave, or other such solar-related conditions would be relatively commonplace in the desert belt, and there is no evidence that the ancient Egyptians had previously, or since, behaved in such an unusual manner.

There are only a limited number of things that can have happened to the sun. Most, such as solar flares and sunspot activity, would not be visible to the naked eye. Even if such phenomena did cause adverse effects on earth, there is no way the ancient Egyptians could have linked them together. If something strange had – from the earthbound perspective – happened to the sun, there is only one realistic possibility: something had obscured it. There had been a partial eclipse visible from Egypt in the 1370s
BC
, but it is doubtful that this would explain such drastic and long-term reactions by the Egyptians. After all, if Amonhotep had originally considered the
phenomenon the work of Sekhmet, and had enough time to build the statues, then, as the eclipse had not heralded the end of the sun, he and others would have seen his actions as having been successful. The goddess would have been appeased, and there would have been no support for Akhenaten's introduction of Atenism – a cult that endured as the state religion for well over a decade. Besides, Egypt had witnessed many eclipses which, although being regarded as indicative celestial events, were not seen as omens of catastrophe. If some strange phenomenon had occurred, it would have to have been either longerterm, unprecedented, or far more spectacular.

The remaining possibility is that the sun's light had been dimmed, or its appearance altered, due to atmospheric contaminants. This could be caused by such phenomena as an intense meteorite shower, an asteroid or comet impact, or a massive volcanic eruption. Airborne debris from such events – particles of dust thrown high into the stratosphere – can in some circumstances contaminate the atmosphere of the entire globe. The asteroid collision believed to have wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago is thought to have thrown up enough material to have darkened the skies the world over. Something less life-threatening, but equally dramatic, can result from volcanic activity. In 1980, for example, when the volcano of Mount St Helens erupted in America, there were green sunsets reported months afterwards as far away as Russia. Had such a rare solar phenomenon happened during Amonhotep's reign?

There is compelling evidence that a gigantic volcanic eruption did occur in the Mediterranean around the time of Amonhotep's reign. Every winter a fresh layer of ice forms on the Greenland ice cap, creating clearly defined strata, one for each year. Every layer contains trapped air, holding a sample of the earth's atmosphere as it was when the ice formed. In the
1970s Danish geophysicists began taking core samples many metres down into the ice, so as to recover a year-by-year record of the earth's atmospheric conditions going back some 100,000 years. The team, led by Drs C.U. Clausen, H.B. Hammer and W. Dansgard, soon observed that from years when there had been major volcanic eruptions, such as the one that destroyed Roman Pompeii in
AD
79, the samples evidenced high levels of acidity. In an article in
Nature
magazine in November 1980, the team reported that there had been a massive eruption somewhere in the world around 1390
BC
, with a margin of error of some fifty years either way. This might indeed have coincided with the reign of Amonhotep III (
circa
1389–1352
BC
).

The only eruption large enough to have resulted in the atmospheric conditions recorded by the Danes, and known by geologists to have occurred within 200 years either side of this date, was a gigantic eruption on the Aegean island of Thera. Although, at the time, this seemed to place the eruption around a hundred years after it was previously thought to have occurred, more recent radiocarbon tests from Thera have tended to support the findings (see Appendix). However, even if Thera
had
erupted during Amonhotep's reign, would it have had any significant, or observable effects in Egypt?

Thera (also called Santorini) was the southernmost of the Greek Cyclades islands, and in the fifteenth century
BC
it had supported an important trading port of the Minoan civilization. Today Thera is a crescent-shaped island forming a bay almost ten kilometres across, and the cliffs surrounding it are ribboned with layers of volcanic debris and once-molten rock, testifying to the island's violent past. The bay itself is actually a crater formed by the ancient eruption, and it is so deep that no ship's anchor reaches the bottom. In the 1930s, the Greek archaeologist Spyridon Marinatos was the first to propose that at some point towards the end of the Minoan period a gigantic volcanic eruption had all but destroyed the island, and in 1956 two geologists, Dragoslav Ninkovich and Bruce Heezen of Columbia University USA, conducted a survey of the sea bed to try to determine precisely how large the eruption had been. From their survey ship, the
Vema,
they were able to determine the exact size of the volcanic crater – 51 square kilometres – and from this, they estimate the incredible magnitude of the event.

There are various types of volcanic eruption: some spew forth rivers of molten lava, others produce searing mud slides, but by far the most devastating is when the pressure of the magma causes the volcano literally to blow its top. Going by the resultant crater size, that is what happened at Thera almost three and a half thousand years ago. A similar eruption occurred at the volcano of Mount St Helens in Washington State in 1980, when the explosion blasted away the mountain side with the power of a fifty-megaton bomb.

The first sign of trouble came in the middle of March, when a series of earth tremors gradually grew more violent and frequent. Scientists were certain that an eruption was imminent after a series of rumbling explosions were heard to come from deep within the mountain, and searing-hot steam began to vent through cracks in the rocks. By April, a geological survey team was established in the area to keep a round-the-clock watch on an enormous 90-metre bulge that had appeared on the volcano's north slope. Even though they were prepared for an eruption, no one had anticipated the sheer magnitude of the event. The mountainside slid away exposing the molten core. When superheated magma under sufficient pressure is exposed to air the result is an explosion of unimaginable proportions. At 8.32 on the morning of 18 May the whole mountain began to shake and one of the observers called excitedly over his radio: 'This is it!'

They were his last words. In that instant, he and forty-six others were vaporized. A mass of searing volcanic material blasted outwards, killing a further twenty-five people over twenty-two kilometres away. They too had thought themselves safe, and many of them had been photographing the event when they were killed. Every living thing in a 251-square-kilometre swath of land north-west of the volcano was utterly destroyed. Thousands of hectares of forest were flattened and molten debris covered everything like the surface of the moon. What had once been a bustling tourist resort over sixteen kilometres from the volcano was now covered entirely by volcanic material. Luckily it had been evacuated, but a nearby farmer had declined to leave his home. He had refused to believe that such a distant eruption – as far away from him as the outskirts of a major city are from its centre – could possibly affect him. His farm is still buried beneath solidified molten rock.